Process

The initial idea was building an interactive “mirror to society,” which would provide the user with instant feedback of society’s preconceptions of them based on their appearance. Given the creative constraint of the Halloween theme for the midterm, we decided to build a pumpkin that would judge the effectiveness of one’s costume.

Early sketch of the project

We began implementing our prototype by buying the TTL Serial JPEG Camera from Adafruit and getting it to transfer images to p5.js successfully. The only example code we could find wrote captured images to the Arduino’s SD card, so we tweaked that code to transfer the raw bytes of the JPEG image over serial (see bottom of post for the source code).

Creating the pumpkin enclosure

After we got the camera working we began fabricating. We bought a plastic pumpkin, carved it, then placed all the components together inside. The whole process turned out to be more time-consuming and error-prone than we had anticipated.

Reflection

The TTL camera was (predictably) the most cumbersome component of the project, due to its low transfer speed, low resolution, and inability to capture legible pictures without natural light. For a future iteration of the project, using a webcam hooked to a Raspberry Pi or similar computer would allow the same amount of mobility without those aforementioned limitations.

Wiring things together

On the presentation side, perhaps a more atypical and striking composition such as mirror with an animatronic mouth would be more effective at communicating the intention of the piece than the generic pumpkin.

All in all, fabrication remains my biggest obstacle to creating objects I’m actually pleased with. Whereas programming the Arduino is mostly straightforward, the process of crafting elegant and sturdy enclosures is mysterious to me, and it’s an area I want to focus on becoming better at in the coming weeks, especially as I’m thinking about my final project, a wearable “empathy suit.”

Arduino sketch for the project